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perezmv

http://oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2006/08/17/inside-pandora-web-radio.html - 0 views

oreilly.com/...inside-pandora-web-radio.html

Pandora howstuffworks music musical technology symbiosis format business model records experiments attributes project company analysts dimensions

shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora (which is also the name of the company) grew out of the Music Genome Project, which company founder Tim Westergren began six years ago.
  • He became fascinated with the way directors described the music they were looking for, which led to his wondering what made people enjoy certain types of music. He asked himself, "If people haven't found any music that they love since college, and artists are struggling to find an audience, is there a role for technology to help bridge the gap?"
  • Westergren started the Genome Project from the idea of creating a platform for connecting people with music that they'll love based on music they already enjoy. The project uses experts called "music analysts" to deconstruct music into its fundamental parts and capture the results into a database. Pandora has 40 professional musicians who come to the office every day and listen to one song at a time, analyzing each in anywhere from 200 to 400 dimensions. (The dimensions are somewhat different for each genre of music.)
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  • Pandora chose the dimensions because they are quantitative. For instance, how breathy are the vocals? Is the music diatonic or chromatic? The music analysts are trained to be able to score songs consistently. In fact, one of the test cases is, "Could a group of 10 musicologists listen to a song and agree on one score for a particular element?"
  • vector space.
  • "What is exciting about the Music Genome Project, with respect to Pandora the radio-listening experience, is that by understanding the music on a song-by-song basis we can put together a playlist that has a much more natural ebb and flow than you might be able to do with collaborative filtering data," Conrad says.
  • "I think curator is the right word," Conrad replied. "Of all the financial models that could be leveraged to make Pandora a successful business, the 'play for pay' model runs completely spiritually opposite to the founding of the company.
  • I asked what Pandora was doing to avoid being influenced by big record labels, which have been widely accused of corrupting traditional radio through payola schemes.
  • "Since we use a human analyst to analyze song by song, we've experimented with using a smaller number of elements," he continued. "We've determined that you can't create interesting playlists with only 20 attributes. But we do keep an eye on machine listening as it might provide a way to augment the manual analysis."
  • I ask myself, "What's this song doing in my Bill Evans station? This song should be in my 'Soft Jazz Guitar' station. Why can't I tell Pandora to place this tune in the appropriate station?"
  • "It's fascinating to me that you raise that particular example," Conrad said. "Because the scenario that you just described is--after we evolved the product over five months and took a lot of low-hanging fruit off the table--probably the number-one listener request.
  • Pandora creates playlists with a "matching engine," written in C and Python, for each listener station. This engine builds the low-level linkage to the "source" music (the music that listeners indicate they like) and the music that actually gets played (a mixture of what the listener explicitly indicated, mixed with music that the Pandora service believes listeners will like). The replication system is Slony.
wstrahan

Pink Floyd: Pandora's Internet radio royalty ripoff - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2447445

pandora internet radio royalties ripoff

shared by wstrahan on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The latest example is how Pandora is pushing for a special law in Congress to slash musicians' royalties – and the tactics they are using to trick artists into supporting this unfair cut in pay.
  • We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.
  • Nearly 90% of the artists who get a check for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year. They cannot afford the 85% pay cut Pandora asked Congress to impose on the music community.
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  • Last year, we joined over 130 other bands and artists to oppose Pandora's campaign to cut the royalties paid for digital radio spins.
  • We've heard Pandora complain it pays too much in royalties to make a profit. (Of course, we also watched Pandora raise $235 million in its IPO and double its listeners in the last two years.) But a business that exists to deliver music can't really complain that its biggest cost is music.
  • Netflix pays more for movies than Pandora pays for music, but they aren't running to Congress for a bailout.
  • Everyone deserves the right to be paid a fair market rate for their work, regardless of what their work entails.
perezmv

Pandora takes aim at local radio advertisers : Business - 1 views

www.stltoday.com/...05-5a66-a7ba-c1a954d903e0.html

pandora advertising advertisements competition

shared by perezmv on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In March, Pandora hired local sales staff in St. Louis as part of its strategy to court local advertisers, and it’s had success out of the gate landing customers. Don Brown Chevrolet, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis University and Panera Bread Co. are just a few of the advertisers that have booked ads on Pandora so far this year.
  • It’s spent the past two years expanding its sales staff nationwide.
  • Its regional sales staff of 60 employees nationwide is growing, and Pandora plans on ultimately having an office in each of the top 50 radio markets.
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  • “Radio is a very unusual media form in that most of its revenue comes from the local market,” said Rich Tullo, director of research at New York brokerage Albert Fried & Co. “The ad rates are higher because it’s local. Ultimately, it will take dollars away from other radio stations.”
  • 72.7 million active monthly users.
  • For those who listen to Pandora on their smartphones or laptops, they’re prompted to enter their ZIP code, year of birth and gender. Users can select the artists’ music they want to hear, and Pandora adds similar music.
  • “We have one-fourth the number of ad units that a traditional FM station has, so your ad will stand out more,”
  • Pandora has yet to post an annual profit.
  • has more than 70 percent market share in the U.S. Internet music segment,
  • St. Louis radio station managers say they haven’t seen a decline in their ad revenue since Pandora entered the market, but they’re watching the new competitor closely.
perezmv

Pandora Pulls Back the Curtain on Its Magic Music Machine | Fast Company | Business + I... - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...urtain-its-magic-music-machine

Pandora howstuffworks music people employees company profit listeners components analysts Westergren

shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • "It’s true that the algorithms mathematically match songs, but the math, all it’s doing is translating what a human being is actually measuring," says Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora in 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. “You need a human ear to discern.”
  • Pandora’s secret sauce is people. Music lovers.
  • "That is the magic bullet for us," Westergren says of the company’s human element. "I can’t overstate it. It’s been the most important part of Pandora. It defines us in so many ways."
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  • It’s also important, at least in the beginning, for these music analysts to sit, physically, in the same room. That way, they can regularly peel back their headphones and engage with their colleagues about the music they’re categorizing.
  • (Pandora reportedly met with bankers recently about a $100 million offering)
  • "We want Pandora to feel like it’s talking to you," Westergren says. "We also literally talk to people. We have a team of people who are called listener advocates. Their job is just to respond personally to every single email, phone call, or letter we get. The identity of Pandora is forged through those collective interactions."
  • Pandora turned its first profit at the end of that year, earning $50 million in total revenues.
  • Analysts predicted 2010 would end with $100 million in revenues for Pandora--Westergren declined to confirm or deny the number, saying only of revenue, "It’s all going in the right direction."
perezmv

My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What ... - 0 views

thetrichordist.com/...ake-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale

artistsmakingmoney musicians money profit artistsgettingcash

shared by perezmv on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • As a songwriter Pandora paid me $16.89* for 1,159,000 play of “Low” last quarter.  Less than I make from a single T-shirt sale.  Okay that’s a slight  exaggeration.  That’s only the premium multi-color long sleeve shirts and that’s only at venues that don’t take commission.  But still.
  • Soon you will be hearing from Pandora how they need Congress to change the way royalties are calculated so that they can pay much much less to songwriters and performers. For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough. The majority of songwriters have their rates set by the government, too, in the form of the ASCAP and BMI rate courts–a single judge gets to decide the fate of songwriters (technically not a “compulsory” but may as well be).  This is already a government mandated subsidy from songwriters and artists to Silicon Valley.  Pandora wants to make it even worse.  (Yet another reason the government needs to get out of the business of setting webcasting rates and let the market sort it out.)
  • get an actual business model
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  • Right now Pandora plays one minute of commercials an hour on their free service. Here’s an idea!  Play two minutes of commercials and double your revenue!
perezmv

Pandora - Investor Relations - News Release - 0 views

investor.pandora.com/phoenix.zhtml

technology pandora technologists growth company

shared by perezmv on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Both have established impressive track records leading Pandora’s strong team of technologists.
  • “I’m excited to promote two top technology leaders to these important positions.
  • Mr. Conrad has led Pandora’s engineering and product organization from the product’s inception and has guided the team as they delivered increasingly sophisticated playlist techniques, mobile, consumer electronics and in-car listening technology, as well as sophisticated advertising solutions
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  • “Our team of engineers has developed some of the most innovative music technology in the world and changed the way we all consume music,” said Chris Martin, Pandora’s new Chief Technology Officer. “Tom and I have built an incredibly strong team, and I am energized by the opportunity to help Pandora drive forward the future of radio.”
  • “Pandora created the most effective way for music and technology to enhance the lives of music fans and artists alike,” said Mr. Conrad. “As a company, Pandora has always been driven by that intersection between creativity and technology. I am proud to have been a part of this effort, working with an incredibly talented and creative group of technologists. Everything I wanted to know about following one’s passion and running a business I learned at Pandora.”
  • “As Pandora continues to grow, we need to ensure our technology resources are optimized to deliver the best experience possible for listeners, partners and advertisers.”
perezmv

HowStuffWorks "How Pandora Radio Works" - 0 views

computer.howstuffworks.com/...pandora.htm

technology howstuffworks symbiosis music attributes musical songs humans computers Pandora

shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora has no concept of genre, user connections or ratings. It doesn't care what other people who like Gomez also like. When you create a radio station on Pandora, it uses a pretty radical approach to delivering your personalized selections: Having analyzed the musical structures present in the songs you like, it plays other songs that possess similar musical traits
  • Pandora relies on a Music Genome that consists of 400 musical attributes covering the qualities of melody, harmony, rhythm, form, composition and lyrics. It's a project that began in January 2000 and took 30 experts in music theory five years to complete. The Genome is based on an intricate analysis by actual humans (about 20 to 30 minutes per four-minute song) of the music of 10,000 artists from the past 100 years. The analysis of new music continues every day since Pandora's online launch in August 2005. As of May 2006, the Genome's music library contains 400,000 analyzed songs from 20,000 contemporary artists. You won't find Latin or classical yet: Pandora is in the process of developing a specialized Latin music Genome and is still deep in thought about how to approach the world of classical composition.
perezmv

How Pandora Avoided the Junkyard, and Found Success - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08pandora.html

technology Pandora success music stations

shared by perezmv on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos
  • At the end of 2009, Pandora reported its first profitable quarter and $50 million in annual revenue — mostly from ads and the rest from subscriptions and payments from iTunes and Amazon.com when people buy music.
  • Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee based on 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits.
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  • Some music lovers dislike Pandora’s approach to choosing music based on its characteristics rather than cultural associations.
  • “It’s not just that this has an 80-beat-a-minute guitar riff,” he said. “It’s that this band toured with Eddie Vedder.”
  • For Pandora and its listeners, it was a revelation. Internet radio was not just for the computer. People could listen to their phone on the treadmill or plug it into their car or living room speakers.
  • In January, Pandora announced a deal with Ford to include Pandora in its voice-activated Sync system, so drivers will be able to say, “Launch my Lady Gaga station”
perezmv

DailyTech - Pandora Increases Monthly Subscription Fee, Kills Off Annual Subscription O... - 0 views

www.dailytech.com/...article34555.htm

Pandora profit advertising memberships advertisingversusmemberships companyproceeds

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  • According to Pandora's blog, new Pandora One users will see a price increase from $3.99 to $4.99 per month come May 2014. Existing customers, however, will stay locked into the $3.99 per month price for now
  • "Over this same period, the costs of delivering this service have grown considerably. For example, the royalty rates Pandora pays to performers via SoundExchange for subscription listening have increased 53% in the last five years and will increase another 9% in 2015."
wstrahan

Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views

go.galegroup.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=viva_vcu&tabID=T006&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=11&contentSet=GALE%7CA334728115&&docId=GALE|A334728115&docType=GALE&role=LitRC

pandora royalties internet radio

shared by wstrahan on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Morgan's an independent musician and his song "Better Angels" was among a number of his songs that got some 28,000 plays on Pandora.
  • The song earned $1.62 in royalties over a 90-day period on Pandora, which is a very typical rate.
  • Pandora, which is the number one Internet radio service, saw over $125 million in revenue last quarter, 55 percent more than the year before. But the company still isn't profitable in part because it pays over 60 percent of its revenues to acquire music.
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  • But the future is clearly in Internet radio services like Pandora. According to a survey by the NPD Group, people under 35 spent a quarter of their listening on the Internet in 2012 - that's up 17 percent from the year before. Time spent listening to radio went down 2 percent. At the same time, people are purchasing less music.
perezmv

Clear Channel built iHeartRadio into massive streaming radio service - 0 views

fortune.com/...adio-clear-channel-bob-pittman

technology Pandora iHeart comparing success FM radio

shared by perezmv on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora continues to grow with 250 million registered users
  • There are one billion FM radios in the US and 160 million smartphones and 160 million PCs, so it’s still a subset of the FM marketplace.
  • Pittman doesn’t believe streaming hours will overtake traditional radio in his lifetime.
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  • “Music collections always replace each other and radio always tends to be yet another choice,” he says. “Satellite didn’t kill FM. AM didn’t kill FM. (Streaming music) one more choice and one more device you can listen to the radio on.”
  • digital is an important growth area for the business, even if the $17 billion or so that advertisers spend on radio each year is slow to move over to the Web.
  • In 2012, Clear Channel made strange bedfellows when it joined forces with Pandora to lobby Congress to lower the rates their services were required to pay artists to stream their music online. The companies eventually backed down from that effort in order to focus on a different political tact.
  • Online, people “tend to have a favorite and then they bounce around a couple different services,”
perezmv

Pandora Internet Radio hits two million listeners in Australia and New Zealand - mUmBRELLA - 0 views

mumbrella.com.au/s-australia-new-zealand-239096

technology Pandora success interactive channels evolving

shared by perezmv on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • It’s clear that radio is evolving – and this evolution is being propelled by consumers and technology
  • Key to Pandora’s success, is that we offer listeners an interactive and social experience that is incredibly personal, and artists a channel to be discovered by a new legion of fans
perezmv

Media and Advertising - Global Issues - 0 views

www.globalissues.org/...media-and-advertising

advertisements advertising media misleading brainwashing techniques cost product Pandora money profit buy influence

shared by perezmv on 28 Jun 14 - Cached
    • perezmv
      perezmv on 28 Jun 14
       
      Augmenting human intellect? Probably not.
  • As such it can contribute to anxieties and stress when growing up and even last into adulthood.
  • Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it.
wstrahan

Streaming revenues turn the tide against digital pirates - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...6f-11e3-b519-00144feabdc0.html

streaming music video pirates netflix spotify

shared by wstrahan on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Spotify, the subscription streaming service, has more than 6m subscribers. In video, Netflix, boosted by original productions such as House of Cards , has more than 36m subscribers. Amazon, Google and now Apple, with iTunes Radio, are bringing streaming to a much wider audience
  • This is – at last – translating into meaningful income. The Recording Industry Association of America calculates that revenues from services including Spotify, Pandora and YouTube went from 3 per cent of industry revenues in 2007 to 15 per cent, or more than $1bn, in 2012.
  • Apple’s strategy has pleased some music companies because its streaming service also encourages downloads. But many content owners still believe that streaming cannibalises download and DVD revenues
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  • What is lost from many calculations is the fact that the urge to own may be weaker in the age of streaming, but so is the urge to steal
  • Traffic to peer-to-peer file-sharing and torrent sites is declining where legal alternatives are offered
  • . Netflix’s Ted Sarandos said in May: “When we launch in a territory, the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows.”
  • In an analysis of the Dutch market, Will Page, an economist working for Spotify, found that releases by Rihanna and Taylor Swift that were held off Spotify sold just one legal copy for each BitTorrent download, while hits from One Direction and Robbie Williams that were instantly available for streaming sold four copies. “The legitimate market is beginning to outshine the illegitimate market,” says Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s chairman.
  • High rates of piracy for hits such as Game of Thrones in markets such as Australia show that consumers still look to illegal sources if content is not available legally in all parts of the world the minute that US consumers get it.
  • No one is ready to declare victory against the pirates, but the tide is starting to turn against them. The Napster generation is growing up – and behind it is an iTunes, Netflix or Spotify generation that has higher expectations of online content, but is more willing to pay.
wstrahan

Music as a Service as an Alternative to Music Piracy? - Springer - 0 views

link.springer.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...fulltext.html

music service alternative piracy

shared by wstrahan on 02 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Music pirates show a clearly positive approach to MaaS. The mean of attitude was 3.95 on a five-point scale.
  • While most pirates would use the free version (mean = 3.57), few would pay for MaaS (mean = 1.65).
  • Alternative
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  • We can observe a strong difference between the influence of attitude on intention to use free MaaS and the intention to use paid MaaS: building a strong attitude therefore does not lead directly to high willingness to pay; instead, it is the intention to test free MaaS that is influenced by attitudes.
  • We found that the search for music recommendations and the flat rate preference influence the attitude towards MaaS positively and significantly. The new recommendation functions and the pricing model are therefore functions users rated highly and which can help build a strongly positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • Pirates seem satisfied with the sound quality of tracks provided via illegal networks and seem to feel safe from prosecution.
  • Our study demonstrated the attractiveness of MaaS offers to music pirates. Nevertheless, most music pirates prefer free MaaS.
  • We showed that flat rates are regarded as an attractive pricing model by music pirates and that this constitutes a suitable alternative to pay-per-download, which is often considered too expensive (Al-Rafee and Cronan 2006).
  • Users who do not consider music piracy owing to moral scruples and higher search costs also show a positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • A reason for the increased willingness to pay may also relate to hedonistic social benefits, established by integrating social features into recommendation systems
  • MaaS providers should therefore focus on comprehensive, user-friendly recommendation systems that support social exchanges between MaaS users. Our study results clearly demonstrate that a platform’s features positively influence the attitude towards MaaS. Besides direct recommendations from friends, users can receive recommendations based on tagged music channels or collaborative filtering.
  • The presented study demonstrates that new offers of music consumption can also be an attractive alternative for music pirates. Although there is no indication of the reduction of illegal downloads in general, music pirates consider the free ad-based version of MaaS an alternative. Music pirates who have rejected legal music consumption due to high prices in the past may well switch to legal consumption.
  • Pandora
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